


Miles To Go

by foxfireflamequeen



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1805416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxfireflamequeen/pseuds/foxfireflamequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come away with me,” Arthur says, hands tight around his mug of cocoa. There’s a silver band around his right thumb. There used to be a gold ring on his left forefinger.</p><p>They met three days ago. They have jobs, friends. Lives that have nothing to do with each other. It’s—not a good idea.</p><p>“Yes,” Merlin says. “I want—yes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles To Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Tag for [this gifset](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/89192907343/title-miles-to-go-ao3-rated-g-status). Happy birthday, Val.

 

They don’t really—know each other, anymore.

“I don’t know if I ever did, but I want to,” Arthur says, looks at him through pale lashes, darts his eyes away when he gets caught. Merlin stirs his coffee, doesn’t think about how Arthur never used to get shy, not around him.

“Come away with me,” Arthur says, hands tight around his mug of cocoa. There’s a silver band around his right thumb. There used to be a gold ring on his left forefinger.

They met three days ago. They have jobs, friends. Lives that have nothing to do with each other. It’s—not a good idea.

“Yes,” Merlin says. “I want—yes.”

 

 

 

He'd expected more fanfare, to be honest. Maybe a calamity of some sort. He always thought he’d know, that everyone would know, when Arthur Pendragon walked the earth again.

He didn’t think Arthur would remember.

“Merlin,” Arthur had said, and Merlin had raised his head from checking in returned books and blinked up at the exact vision of his King—with facial hair of all things—then blinked again and rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember me,” Arthur had rolled his eyes and slapped his head, and Merlin’s mind had immediately gone to magic and treachery and creatures that could take the form of others, except most of those things had stopped existing a long time ago.

He’d still short circuited the security cameras for a few minutes and knocked Arthur out, just to be safe.

Arthur had been livid when he woke up after Merlin was done running a few magical tests. Merlin had laughed until he cried.

 

 

 

They decide on a road trip, because Merlin is new to Wales after a century roaming around Russia and Arthur wants to see if there’s anything left of his old kingdom.

“Records date back to the ninth century, I think, and you ruled in the sixth.” He spreads the map over Arthur’s dinner table and uncaps a black marker. “There’s no actual evidence that you ever existed.”

“There’s you,” Arthur calls over the rush of tap water where he’s hand-washing his silverware. Merlin tries very hard not to stare. The Arthur he’d known couldn’t tell one end of a chicken from the other; this one can cook  _and_  clean.

“There’s me,” he agrees after a moment, marks locations he remembers from his first life. Most of them aren’t on the map. He hesitates over marking the Lake of Avalon, then does it anyway. He hasn’t seen Freya in a long time, after all.

Arthur turns around while he’s dithering over marking the area between Camlann and Avalon. He hasn’t been back, but he knows where it is. Can’t get it out of his head.

“It’s where you died,” Merlin doesn’t look up. “I don’t—”

Arthur plucks the marker from his hand. “Then we won’t,” he says, decisive like he’s still the King of Camelot. “Honestly Merlin, it’s not like I want to go back to the place I died either.”

Merlin should be grateful to Arthur, he supposes, for not making that as awkward as it could have been, but mostly he’s just tempted to throw a plate at his head. The familiarity of the feeling is comforting. “I was hoping you’d be less of a dollophead this time around.”

“You should really put that in the dictionary,” Arthur ruffles his hair, and it’s as annoying as it ever was. “As far as I know, there’s still no such word.”

“It’s idiomatic,” Merlin grumbles, and pulls up Google Maps on his phone.

 

 

 

Arthur’s car is a monstrous red Chevrolet that eats up gas faster than a wilddeoren and is absolutely compensating for  _some_ thing—not that he’s about to tell Arthur that—so they take Merlin’s humble blue Ford. Arthur bids his car the most pitiful farewell when Merlin comes by to pick him up, and half an hour into the drive Merlin gets tired of feeling like he’s kicked a puppy and hands over his keys.

He regrets it almost instantly. Arthur drives like a fiend.

 

 

 

“Can you still do,” Arthur waves his hands around uncertainly. Merlin flops onto his cheap motel sheets and waits for him to work up the nerve to say it. “I mean, I know you did something when I found you.”  _He_  was supposed to find  _Arthur_. “But are you still—is there still—magic?”

Merlin waits for him to settle on his own bed, until they’re face to face with an expanse of safe carpet between them. Arthur’s hair washes out in electric light; Merlin remembers how it used to shine under candle flames.

“There’s very little left,” he scuffs his toe against the carpet. “I’m not as powerful as I used to be.” He opens his hand, and a ball of fire dances on his palm. “Just parlour tricks, now.”

Arthur stands, walks across the floor to sit next to him. He doesn’t look afraid, and Merlin wants to tell him  _everything_.

“It won’t burn,” he says instead, and Arthur slides their palms together, straight through the fire without the slightest misgiving. Merlin sighs, resigned to forever chasing after a man who refuses to learn caution.

They sit as Arthur explores, blowing at the flame to put it out and waving his hand through it to see if it burns. Eventually he grows bored, lies back against the headboard and throws his feet over Merlin’s lap.

“I’m not your manservant anymore,” Merlin says, wry.

“Were you ever really?” Arthur grins, bright as fireworks against the night sky, and Merlin forgets to tell him his feet smell.

“Who do you think did your laundry every day?” he scoffs.

“Your magic,” Arthur says without preamble. He draws up his feet and tucks them in; Merlin misses their weight.

He pulls up his own legs, turns to face Arthur. “Using magic is tiring, you know. It’s not like I was just sitting there while my magic did all the work.”

Only sometimes, but Arthur doesn’t need to know that.

“But you did use it; you used it all the time.” If the quiet wonder in Arthur’s voice strikes Merlin a bit dumb, he hopes it doesn’t show when he nods. “Tell me.”

“It was a long time ago, Arthur.” He’s waited a long time. “I don’t remember a lot.”

 _Just you_ , he doesn’t say.

Arthur reaches over, catches his hand. “Then tell me what you remember.”

 

 

 

Merlin wakes once, in the middle of the night. Arthur’s bed is empty and he’s snoring away above Merlin, cheek pillowed on his arms and long legs hanging off the side of the too-narrow bed. Merlin’s head is on the half of the pillow that Arthur’s stomach isn’t occupying, the duvet stuck under him. He wrestles it out, throws it over them best as he can and curls up again.

 

 

 

“I don’t recognize this place.” Arthur steps up to him and they stand, shoulders brushing, looking over the mountains where they first met.

“Me neither,” Merlin says.

 

 

 

They get lost, because of course they do, and Merlin’s GPS stops working, because of course it does. They park the car and spread the map over the hood, and it takes them five minutes to realize they’re looking at it upside-down.

“I used to be good with maps,” Arthur huffs after a while, shoves at Merlin when he laughs. “Shut up.”

“I think we can take this road down to the gas station there.” Merlin traces the route with his finger. “We’ll ask for directions.” He glances up when there’s no response. “Arthur?”

“Mm?” Arthur stares at the map a moment longer, then seems to shake himself out of it. “Yeah.” He sniffs primly, but it’s halfhearted at best. “Can you imagine, the great King of Camelot, asking for directions.”

His eyes are distant. Merlin recognizes them from the months Uther lay sick in his chambers, wasting away from grief, and he hates it now as much as he did then.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Arthur isn’t king anymore; Merlin can reach out, draw him close if he wants, but he fists his hands on the crinkled paper and doesn’t.

“You used to ask me that—before.” There’s something self-deprecating in Arthur’s smile. “I never returned the favor.”

“Yes, you did,” Merlin says, breathes because this is the same stupid, stupid man he knew, and not much has changed after all. “I just—I never told you the truth.”

“With good reason,” Arthur rolls his eyes hard enough that Merlin worries they’re going to fall out of his head. “Given the way I reacted the first time.”

“Nah, you came around,” he grins, because it hurts—less, now, to remember Arthur going still in his arms, so many lifetimes ago.

Arthur makes an aborted motion, jerks to a stop like he’s thought better of it. “You’re so strange,” he says affectionately, and Merlin’s heart gives a funny little lurch. “C’mon, let’s go meet your girlfriend. Who’s the fabled Lady of the Lake.” He shakes his head. “Only you, Merlin.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Merlin protests, gathering the map as Arthur slides into the driver’s seat.

“No, because apparently I killed your first love.” He starts the engine, not sounding half as sorry as he should. Merlin scowls at him.

“Are we having a pity party?”

Arthur raises an eyebrow, eyes on the road. “For you or for me?”

Merlin has to pause and turn that over, because he’s not entirely sure. “I don’t care,” he settles. “I don’t want a pity party in my car.”

“We should hit up a pub,” Arthur says. “Have a proper pity party over a bottle of Jack.”

Merlin goggles at him. “You are the most pompous, supercilious, condescending, royal  _imbecile_ —” he starts, then has to cut off because Arthur’s laughing so hard there’s a good chance he’s going to drive them off the mountain pass.

 

 

 

It occurs to him as they’re pulling away from the gas station. “You were going to apologize, weren’t you?”

“What?” Arthur straightens, instantly on alert, and Merlin knows he’s right.

“Before I cut you off,” Merlin sits up, narrows his eyes. “You were going to apologize to me.”

“No,” Arthur says, and, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and, “Shut up, Merlin,” and Merlin grins stupidly all the way to Avalon.

 

 

 

Freya doesn’t talk to him often. Merlin’s not sure she can. He’s not surprised that the lake is silent when he calls to her.

“Bad day, I guess,” he shrugs. Arthur swings an arm over his shoulders.

“We’ll come back another time,” he says, and Merlin thinks he’d like that. Freya chose to give him up to Arthur; it’s only fair that they meet.

“I laid Lancelot to rest here, too.” Arthur stiffens at his side before he’s done speaking, but he pushes through. “And you.”

“I said goodbye to you here,” Merlin says, and hates how his voice breaks. Arthur says nothing, but the arm around him tightens and Merlin—Merlin thinks he could turn into it, twist his fingers in Arthur’s jacket and cry for a while.

He doesn’t.

 

 

 

Arthur, when he makes an effort to be kind, is very endearing for all the wrong reasons.

“I’m appalled by your taste in music.” Merlin is torn between pulling the earphone out and listening to the rest of the song, between being upset over Avalon and irritated at Arthur. Next to him, Arthur tries and fails to sing along with the lyrics. He has a good enough voice, but Merlin is fairly confident he doesn’t know the language, and it’s hilarious and annoying and just the kind of thing Arthur would try to cheer him up, and he’s laughing before he knows why.

Arthur looks so proud of himself that Merlin doesn’t have the heart to tell him how godawful he sounds.

 

 

 

“You’re sleeping in your own bed tonight,” Merlin says firmly, and in revenge Arthur locks him out of the bathroom for an hour when he has to piss.

“You’re godawful at singing K-pop!” Merlin shouts through the door.

 

 

 

He doesn’t want to take the train, and he says it again as Arthur pulls him aboard an empty carriage by the hand and pushes him into a seat. “My car,” he bemoans.

“Will still be here when we come back.” Arthur sounds overly exasperated, considering he’d spent thirty minutes staring pathetically out the window when they left  _his_  car behind, safe in his garage. “I want a break from driving.”

“You’d get that if you let me drive sometimes,” Merlin points out, because Arthur has been holding his keys hostage since they started this trip and hasn’t given them up once. It’s possible that he’s afraid Merlin won’t let him drive ever again if he does.

“Be quiet and enjoy the view.” Merlin rolls his eyes at that and looks out the carriage, doesn’t make the lame joke about being more interested in the view inside. They’re not—there, yet.

Arthur is a little too broad to fit comfortably on the tiny wooden bench. Merlin watches him fold his knees and squish into his seat and thinks, they could be.

The train lurches to a start. They rumble over a river and a lake, and Arthur splays his legs and leans close to hear Merlin talk about Indian jungles and Russian winters, laughs and laughs when he complains about crude drawings of dicks in returned library books.

It makes Merlin smile, too, because the king he knew would think twice and look around before laughing so free. He likes the way this Arthur’s shoulders hang low, relaxed now that they don’t have to bear the weight of an entire kingdom, the way he curls in on himself when he’s upset and stands an inch shorter than Merlin knows he is. This Arthur gets tired of shifting around on the too-small bench and slides to the dirty floor, ignoring Merlin’s splutters—“You can’t even see anything from down there!”—and kicking at him until he does the same.

“You’re still a bit of a prat at heart, aren’t you,” Merlin sighs.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Arthur smiles wide, and it’s impossible to look away.

 

 

 

“This.” Arthur breathes, mouth slack in surprise. “I know—this.”

The landscape hasn’t changed much, but it has changed enough that even Merlin has trouble remembering what used to stand at the bottom of this mountain. He presses his lips together, wonders if Arthur remembers wrong.

“It was the border between Camelot and Essetir.” Arthur raises an arm, points into the distance. “Ealdor—was somewhere there.”

He didn’t know the castle where he was born, the courtyard where he learned to fight, the citadel where he met Guinevere. He remembers the tiny village where Merlin grew up.

It means something, probably. Merlin brushes their hands together and doesn’t ask.

 

 

 

Arthur insists on visiting the place where he supposedly died, traipses through the dark with dowsing rods to pinpoint the exact location of his ‘demise’. He drags Merlin along to talk to a few enthusiastic scholars who have given their lives to studying the Arthurian legends. Merlin keeps expecting him to laugh at some of the more inaccurate details, but Arthur only listens, eyes wide and enraptured as a little boy hearing tales of battles and glory.

Later, he tosses the keys on the nightstand in their motel room and turns to Merlin.

“The sixth century,” he says. “I lived in the sixth century, and there are people now who've spent their whole  _lives_  learning about me.” He rakes fingers through his hair and paces as Merlin drops down on the bed near the window, unlaces his boots and tries not to smile. “The way they talk about me, it’s like I’m—like I was—”

“Some great king?” His words come muffled from where he’s gotten stuck in his jumper. Arthur huffs a sardonic laugh, helps him sort out the arms and tugs it over his head, nearly takes his undershirt with it.

“Yes, Merlin.” Arthur sounds a little strangled; Merlin pulls down his shirt, frowns up at him and gets the jumper thrown in his face. “Like I was some great king who did it all on my own.”

“Oh, trust me,” Merlin grins. “No one thinks you did it all on your own.”

“Shut up, Merlin.” Arthur’s eyes are impossibly blue, and terribly fond. Merlin feels his face warm, is faintly concerned he’s developing an inappropriate Pavlovian reaction to that phrase. “I know there are legends about you as well, the greatest sorcerer who ever walked the earth and whatnot.”

“Got that memo, did you?” he jumps in, gets a pillow tossed at his head for his trouble.

“What I mean is.” Arthur’s sobering, the corners of his mouth pulling down, so Merlin bites his tongue and waits for him to finish. “There are stories about you. There are stories about me. There aren’t many stories about—us.”

“There will be this time,” Merlin says, because they know, now. “And you were,” he adds, sudden and fierce and desperately afraid of never getting the chance to say it again. “You were a great king. The greatest that ever lived. You  _are_  the greatest man I’ve ever known.”

Arthur watches him for a long moment, stunned, and Merlin knows him, knows the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he wants to say thank you but the words are stuck in his throat, so he’s not expecting it when Arthur manages to blurt, “You too,” before fleeing to the bathroom.

 

 

 

They don’t talk about that, either.

 

 

 

“Do you miss Gwen?” Merlin asks, and immediately wants to throw himself out of the moving car.

“No,” Arthur says, a little too quick, but not sad.

Merlin smiles, looks out the window. “Okay.”

“I don’t,” Arthur insists. “Shut  _up_ , Merlin.”

Merlin shuts his mouth, definitely worried about that Pavlovian reaction now.

 

 

 

They go to the pub, forego both the whiskey and the pity party for the mead that makes Arthur loud and happy and Merlin choke and wrinkle his nose.

“Oh come on,” Arthur pushes another round in front of him and takes a long drink from his mug. “You used to spend all your time in the tavern before!”

“I never had time to go to the tavern,” Merlin points out, tries to down a large gulp and ends up spraying half of it out his nose. It’s not pretty, but Arthur is vastly amused.

“So you say. But you did drink mead—”

“Because that was all I could afford!”

“—and mead back then wasn’t half as good as this,” Arthur continues like he didn’t say a word. He always did have a remarkable ability to fully ignore what he didn't want to hear, and Merlin tells him so.

“I have more refined tastes now,” Merlin sniffs primly, expecting the kick under the table.

Arthur blinks at him. “I’m sorry, should I get you a cosmo instead?”

Eventually, when they’re both well and drunk, they talk about their friends from long ago. Merlin hasn’t come across one of them since, but Arthur has. Morgana is his stepsister and Uther is his father and Sir Leon is his childhood friend, and when they’re sober they’ll talk about what this means, if the other Knights of the Round Table have been reincarnated too, if Guinevere has, and Mordred. They’ll talk about the why here and why now, but tonight they reminisce and laugh and tumble into their motel room and fall asleep in their clothes, curled together on the same bed.

 

 

 

Arthur presses him against the hood of his car, kisses him soft and sweet and achingly careful. Merlin closes his eyes and wonders how Arthur knew he might break.

 

 

 

“What happens when we get home?” He shouldn’t ask, but he does because they’re done, they’re going back, and things—change.

“I moved across the country to find you; I hope you’re not expecting me to move back,” Arthur says, matter-of-fact, and honks at a slow-moving truck. “The transfer was hard enough the first time.”

“Oh,” Merlin says. “Switch to the outer lane; that thing’s moving like a turtle.”

 

 

 

They know each other—enough.

Arthur holds out his left hand as he drives, palm up. Merlin tangles their fingers together and thinks, they can have this.

 

 


End file.
